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 Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2017 7:07 am
He tucked his phone into his pocket and left the cabin, walking down the path and into the woods to the north. Lawr knew the location. It was best to not make this public like the jungle. Twitter was already getting the wrong idea like it usually would.
Finding a tree, he leaned against it and slid down to sit, staring at his phone as he waited.
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Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2017 7:23 am
Outwardly, Lawrence appeared calm and normal, exuding his usual air of complete indifference. After all, he didn't get angry the same way most people seemed to, there was no fuming, not even furrowed brows, but internally he was absolutely furious. He'd been betrayed brutally by someone he'd considered a person that he could trust and it was his turn to be on the receiving end of traitorous acts.
Melvin had said to come here, so he did, patiently striding into the area and taking a few deep breaths as he sought out the other man's scent but spotted Melvin before he could.
Lawrence didn't generally swear, he didn't raise his voice, but right now it was tempting. "I trusted you." he said, low and dangerous. "I trusted you the most. And that's how you repay me?"
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Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2017 7:26 am
Melvin was resigned, awaiting whatever Lawr wanted to deliver. Staring at his phone, he slowly finished his messages and tucked his phone away before giving Lawr the full attention he deserved.
"Whatever I tell you, it's not going to excuse what I did. It's not going to change anything." And that was all there was to it.
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Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2017 7:37 am
Lawrence wasn't easy to wound, most of his self worth was impermeable and self-contained. There were facts to him, immovable and unchangeable things, he was smart, he was exceptional, he had endless potential, these things couldn't be hurt. But he was ageing, against his will he was ageing and where he'd formerly been fully concious of the fact he was great looking, fit and virile, now he knew he was bordering on the gaunt and edging into later middle age. That uncertainty left him vulnerable and by targetting Mikael the betrayal had hit him where it hurt most.
"So you've just absolved yourself." he said. "You've already decided you don't need to hear me because it won't change anything."
He wanted to attack Melvin, to lunge forward and strangle him the way he'd almost strangled Horace. The only reason he didn't was because he knew now that such an act would hurt him more than it would hurt Melvin. He would find other ways to dig deeper than that, deeper than death. He knew Melvin's weaknesses and for the first time since he'd met him he'd given him a reason to use them against him without restraint.
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Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2017 7:43 am
"No. I'm saying that whatever excuse I give will come off as an excuse. I'm not denying it. I'm not here to lie to you, but I didn't sleep with him."
"I love you, and yet I hit on your son. Even I knew how bad it was and I still went ahead with it. I'm here to listen. I just don't want others listening in on this because it's not their business. I also don't want to cause more problems for everyone by making a show of it than what I've already done. It was bad enough when it happened at the jungle and I don't want a repeat."
"You deserve to speak, to shout, and if you want to, I can tell you what happened. So.." He gestured for Lawr to talk or whatever else he felt was necessary or deserved.
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Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2017 7:53 am
Melvin's response was the wrong response. Immediately Lawrence felt that he was being distanced, that it was an excuse. Melvin was the one in control, he was the one who apparently decided where and when they talked about this and he had the gall to state it all as if it was some small irrelevant slip up like admitting he'd bought the wrong groceries.
He was even given a cue to speak, a designated slot to ineffectually shout or speak.
Stubbornly, he was silent for a few long moments, simply staring right at Melvin, Butch doing nothing but snarling in drawn out ragged breaths in his thoughts. The buzzsaw sound was almost soothing in the face of the things he wanted to do.
"Then you did not ever love me." he said finally, breaking the silence. "When I first met you." he went on. "You were concerned that you were unworthy of love, that you'd deserved the fate that Rin had received, that somehow you had failed her. I told you that wasn't true, because it had to be true, right? I wanted you to be well. And yet now I'm thinking that maybe what happened to her saved her from this, saved her from you callously making decisions which would break a lesser person. It's all well and good because it's me, I don't feel things the same way right? It can all just be scheduled in and dealt with like responsible, businesslike adults."
When he was angry Butch sprang to his hands more readily than usual, even when he did not intend to attack directly. That was what happened, lending an elegant and long clawed flourish to his gestures as the weapon twisted all the way up to his shoulders.
"You say you didn't sleep with him but from what I heard you did plenty more besides. Preying on the innocent Melvin, I never did think you had it in you. Was it because he was young? Younger, more handsome. I set you free after all didn't I? , why not go for something better, an upgrade on what you'd been.." and he pulled the long spiked choke chain taut between both claws, eyeing it thoughtfully. "...tethered to."
And to think it happened in the jungle. "The jungle. Before or after? Either way you /certainly/ didn't wait long to stab me in the back. I should have killed you like everyone else who leaves."
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Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2017 8:11 am
His jaw clenched at her name. "You don't get to mention Rin. You used her name. You lied about her. You don't get to pretend anymore that you knew how she was or what she was." His eyes narrowed up at Lawr and he slowly rose up, not concerned about the claws that grew out like metallic vines up the slender, flawless limbs that he once held. "Don't ever mention her like that." And that was not something he was going to tolerate if Lawr continued.
Against the tree, he felt the sting of what he had done to Lawr, but his misinterpretation was wrapped too much into something he knew Lawr focused a lot on by bringing it up constantly. Youth. He would kill for it. Looks. How many times had he seen him spend silent minutes just debating how he would dress that morning or what products he should get without any concern for the price.
His mind also went to what Mik had said himself about his father.
"I didn't do it to hurt you. I didn't do it to get back at you. I didn't do it to replace you. It just happened. You were my everything, Lawr. For years I wanted to be anything I could to be with you, but that time in the jungle - you wouldn't even let me touch you. I wanted you in my life because you were such a huge part of it and it never mattered to me what I was or what it was that we had as long as you were there because if I could somehow make you feel some degree of happiness in your life, to help you in some way, then I was happy to keep going. You were never....scheduled and business to me. What we had was messy and ..had so much feelings and history wrapped into it, so when you said no to all of it, I didn't know what to do. I thought we had a future. I thought we had a now, but all this time you were looking out for something else." His eyes looked him over. "Maybe a upgrade." Someone less selfish. Someone less flawed. Someone more timid and gentle. A fresh start.
"All I could think was that you were being selfish for devoting yourself to Rodney. Selfish for keeping me away once and for all. That you got tired of whatever we were after all this time, that the worth of that didn't matter anymore or was something that was being exchanged for something shinier and more promising. I was hurt and I didn't know what to do with myself. He offered. He offered again and again after I told him how dangerous it was, and then I just thought - why not just be selfish if no one else cared anymore? What did it matter anymore? Maybe it could have been anyone, but it wasn't."
His fingertips slid over the bark of the tree behind him, nails digging into the groves of the bark. "How could I upgrade when I didn't have you anymore? I wasn't tethered to you, Lawr. I wanted to be with you. Why do you think I was so upset when you turned to Rodney instead? You're the one that broke the chain. I was happy to be in the house. You forced me outside. So I wandered and I followed the first person I saw."
The chain caught the light from the trees overhead and he stared at it before looking up at Lawr.
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Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2017 8:25 am
Lawrence couldn't bring himself to look at Melvin as the other man spoke. Not only had he tried to control all of this, he'd now decided that he could determine if he could talk about Rin or couldn't. It rankled him.
"Again and again." he repeated. "Are you honestly using the excuse that Mikael is of loose morals to excuse the erosion of your willpower? Is that even for a second what I am hearing here?"
He resented Melvin's proclamations of devotion and commitment because without the actions to back them up, they meant nothing to him. "You simply needed to be told once and you left. You didn't fight, you didn't do anything, you just left and fell into bed with my son. Those aren't the actions of someone who was in love or who valued things the way they'd been. You dropped me the very moment you had the chance, those are the actions of someone who had been waiting for a long time to be free."
Twisting the chain back around the gauntlet it was tethered to, he continued to avoid looking at Melvin at all. "I had hoped to find a way in time to convince Rodney that things could work with all of us, to find a solution where no one had to leave, but it was all contingent on your loyalty, loyalty which evidently never existed at all. Rodney was not an upgrade to you, he is nothing like you, both of you are incomparably different and always have been, as different as the sun and moon. I didn't look for it, it was there and I felt like we were richer as a whole for it. I overlooked age, I overlooked potential interfering parties, I overlooked everything."
He could feel the hollowness in him again, like a raw and aching nothing in his chest and coiled in it was nothing more than the desire to make Melvin nothing also, to stop him from ever doing this ever again and to make him something permanent and unchanging.
"What did you do to my son?" he said.
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Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2017 9:06 am
"There YOU go again! You keep saying I never loved you. That I never tried. That I never was there for you and that I never cared. You don't even listen to me when I tell you these things. All that I did for years never matter to you! NOTHING matters to you! I don't know what I can even do to prove it if everything till now never mattered to you. Never counted for anything."
"YOUR actions speak too, Lawr. How am I supposed to fight for a relationship YOU decided wasn't worth it. YOU decided to pursue Rodney when you were with us. Doesn't that hurt MY trust for you, that you were going after him all this time and never mentioned it to me that you wanted him to ******** you or you him. And now that you have him, doesn't YOUR actions on not being with me speak of what we had?! How am I supposed to fight when you made it clear that it was so easy to give away. And now you want to work to convince Rodney to include me in? What if he doesn't? Am I just supposed to sit around waiting for you to get what you want again by breaking Rodney down when he made it clear to you that he wants it one way? You wanted to be with him so you are with him. You decided I can't be with you or that - what? I'm on some shelf until the time you whittle Rodney down till I can be squeezed to fit somehow again? And then what would we be? We didn't even clear what we were before!"
"You can't come to me about loose morals without taking a ******** hard look at yourself. You ******** what you want. Go after what you want. Don't you think that ******** hurts too?! Everyone just gets to take your bullshit but I ******** up and then NOTHING I did matters. Well it did to me! YOU were my sun and moon. You were the light and dark of my life. I wanted a future and you said NO. No warning. Just 'OH I'm ******** Rodney now cause well whatever we had was probably not so important.. You even made it sound like it back in the tent. That what we had wasn't serious so Rodney and you could be a happy couple."
"If I wanted to drop you, I could have. When you lied about Rin. When you lied about who you were. ********, I even wanted to be with you when you were Rodney."
He didn't summon his weapon. Lawr wanted specifics. "We kissed. We touched. That's it. He didn't ******** me. I didn't ******** him."
"I'm not excusing myself from my willpower. I made my decision then in the jungle." He stared hard back at him.
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Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2017 9:24 am
"Why should I listen to what you tell me when you've done this to me?" he said, trying not to think about Melvin and Mikael, feeling oddly violated by the action, as if it had been him who'd been taken advantage of and replaced, uncertain how to even deal with feeling slighted that way.
"We talked about me sleeping with other people and you were fine with it, we had a more or less open relationship at that time. You can't just twist it now and make it out that it was some together forever relationship. If it had been then Rodney who lived in the house would have at least NOTICED. He thought you hated me you know, he thought that it was some love hate thing or he'd never have done what he did." He didn't have the empathy to understand what was wrong with being put on a shelf until he could fix things, nor why Melvin sounded so outraged about it. "That..was the plan?" he said, faltering slightly. "I thought it could be worked out."
He couldn't attack Melvin and didn't know what else to do to alleviate the feeling of inadequacy and uncharacteristic helplessness. It was like Melvin had managed to take something of Maja away from him too and he couldn't even understand why.
"You should have just drowned me in that river." he said, "You'd have been celebrated as a hero. Rodney would be free to live his life and none of this would have happened. You could just sleep with Mikael instead." And for Lawrence it was an oddly grim statement, never one to resign himself to any sort of harm.
"Maybe you are used to being hurt." he said. "It seems to happen to you a lot. I don't get hurt often so I don't know what to do with it, but you have undeniably hurt me." He turned his back on the other man. "And I've never felt older."
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Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2017 9:43 am
"You don't have to listen to me. I know I ******** up the moment it happened. When we did talk after, you and I, and you brought him up, I know there would be no forgiveness. I knew you would hate me with ever fiber of your being, and because of that I hoped beyond all reason that it would never be brought up because I still wanted what little I had, just to even talk to you even if I couldn't have you again, to still be a possibility because at least I'd be some part of our life."
"But even that was selfish of me."
"It's funny. What I assumed between Horace and you is the same thing Rodney assumed between you and I. I don't hate him for that. I'm not even sure what we had, but at least it felt like something rather than.......whatever this is going to be. Nothing I guess."
He leaned against the tree with his full weight, staring up.
"I don't know your plans. I don't know what you are thinking a lot of the time." He still didn't
"I don't want you to die. I don't want you to drown. I don't care what they would think of me or do if you did go. I care about what you think. I don't want to sleep with Mikael." He could. Mik wanted to, but that wouldn't make anyone's lives better.
"I might get hurt, but that doesn't mean you didn't made me happy. That doesn't mean I wanted to hurt you or anyone." No amount of sorry's was going to fix it either. It wasn't going to change what happened.
"I don't think I deserve you."
"But I wish you were still here."
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Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2017 10:00 am
"You've already written me off as gone and I'm still here." he said. He didn't understand why it was like this, why because he'd slept with Rodney that Melvin had been able to just cut him off and was already talking to him as if there was a gulf between them. Melvin was supposed to be a feeling creature, how could someone with any degree of emotion just cut it off? It wasn't how things were meant to go and it had messed everything up.
"Why does friendship and closeness rely so wholly and utterly on sex?" and with this he turned around again, irritated visibly. "Why? Why do you need to be able to sleep with someone, be available and potential for them to want to be around? Nothing about our relationship would have changed except the sex but that was too much for you, so you left. You walked out and left. And now you stand here saying you wanted to be part of my life. You were part of my life, you chose to leave, you chose to sexually assault my son, those were choices you made. I left the door open for you and you banished yourself and blamed me."
He shook his head. "If you want me to go away and never bother you again I am wholly capable of doing so."
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Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2017 10:09 am
"Sex is an action. It usually means you feel something for a person. I took it the wrong way I guess. I was just hurt in the fact of surprise, of suddenly things being changed and didn't know what to do about it. Even more what that change probably meant - that you cut me off and didn't want me around. This was before we talked. I was just....so angry and hurt."
"I left because I needed to figure myself out and didn't want to do something stupid again. Once I did that to Mik, it was a sign that I let things get too far out of hand. That I really was ******** things up without keeping myself in check and hurting everyone me. I didn't want to hurt anyone so I needed to get my s**t straight. I didn't want to make more mistakes. I wanted to sort it all out, get level, and come back."
"But I also feel for you and hunger for your affection. It's hard to go from having you in all those ways and then holding myself back from having you."
As Lawr turned, he looked back up, a wet glimmer as he looked at what was presented. "No. I don't want you to go, but I'm a mess, Lawr. I don't how to feel about you and Rodney or how I'll even react or deal with it while I'm there. I take a lot of things personally, and I just...think you think things."
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Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2017 10:37 am
"I don't actually think a lot of anything." he said coldly. "I mostly think about what I want, in case that wasn't immediately obvious. Which is and has always been you and Rodney." he shrugged his shoulders.
"You are probably better off getting away from me, finding someone young, obviously your inclinations are going that way, I'm hardly the best catch on this island. Hell, if you play up the victim thing I'm sure there are plenty of people who'd take you in and not blame you for anything I've ever done. You have a way out if you feel like sex was the most important thing we ever had."
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Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2017 10:56 am
"I don't think that! If sex was the only thing then I'm sorry if that's the only feelings I put out there." He moved closer now, reaching to hold Lawr's hands and pausing when his fingers hovered over the metal. He knew how weapons got when touched by anyone else.
"Can I still stay?"
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